On Friday, the Knicks allowed the Milwaukee Bucks to score 53 points on just 44 first-half possessions. And then, they held the Bucks to just 33 points on 45 second-half possessions to pull out a 96-86 victory.

The improvement was sparked by an adjustment with the Knicks’ pick-and-roll coverage. Early in the third quarter, Mike Woodson switched it up, because the Bucks’ quick guards were taking advantage of Amar’e Stoudemire on switches. New York started trapping the pick-and-roll, forcing the guards to give up the ball.

“They were trying to get [Monta] Ellis on a big,” Jason Kidd said afterward. “You want to protect Amar’e from having to see that on a repeated basis. We decided to start trapping it, and it changed the whole game around.”

Sometimes, an adjustment like that can elicit more energy from a team. It seemed to work on this night.

“That kind of jump-started us from a defensive standpoint and got us back in the game,” Woodson said.

But this was nothing new, really. Through Friday, the Knicks rank 28th in first-half defense, allowing 106.2 points per 100 possessions. And they rank seventh in second-half defense, allowing just 99.5. That’s the second biggest discrepancy in the league.

Biggest difference, first and second half defense
(points allowed per 100 possessions)

Team

1st Half

Rank

2nd Half

Rank

Diff.

Washington

103.9

19

96.3

3

-7.6

New York

106.2

28

99.5

7

-6.8

Atlanta

104.2

20

98.2

5

-6.1

Charlotte

111.3

30

105.5

25

-5.8

Brooklyn

105.9

27

101.6

11

-4.3

Knicks coach Mike Woodson is plenty aware of the discrepancy between his team’s first-half defense and its second-half defense. But that doesn’t mean he knows why its happening.

“I wish I could explain it,” he said after the game Friday.

The Knicks basically do everything better defensively in the second half. They defend both 2-point shots and 3-points shots better, they rebound better, and they force a lot more turnovers.

It’s not like Defensive Player of the Year Tyson Chandler only plays in the second half. In fact, he’s played 723 first-half minutes and 724 second-half minutes.

The Knicks most-used lineup in the second half has been Raymond Felton, Kidd, J.R. Smith, Carmelo Anthony and Chandler. And it’s been excellent defensively, allowing less than 89 points per 100 possessions in 99 second-half minutes. The same lineup has allowed 101 points per 100 possessions – good but not great – in 52 first-half minutes.

“For some odd reason,” Kidd said, “after halftime, we tend to pay a little bit more attention to the defensive end.”

Maybe, like the Heat who know they can flip the switch when they need to, the Knicks know that they can beat certain teams as long as they don’t get totally blown out in the first half.

But they’re still better when they defend early. Though they managed to come back on Friday, the Knicks are 14-2 when they allow less than 101 points per 100 possessions in the first half.

The New York offense is always going to be there. They rank fourth in first-half offense, first in second-half offense, and third overall. But they’re a below average defensive team, ranking 16th overall, because, on most nights, they don’t bring focus on that end until the third quarter.

“That’s something that we understand,” Chandler said. “We can’t just play great defense against the Miamis and San Antonio Spurs of the world. We’ve got to pick it up every single night. Especially after this All-Star break, that’s one of the things that we really have to focus on.”

13 Comments

The different between heat and knicks 2nd half switch… Knicks had the better one u most probably go on playing D at the the 2nd half to win the gamerather than fight team with offensive strategy just show if ur lucky enough to make almost the shot they made in 2nd, means its all luck.. Plus knicks putting amare in 2nd unit thats make knicks more deep

Hard fan of the Knicks…they maybe doing well in turning the games around and win them, but after d all-star games n post season, teams will change gears, I mean every team vying for the ring will be intensifying every aspect of the game to win. The Knicks should be very serious in winning from the very start of the each game. Go forth it Knicks!

Sorry boss, but I have to disagree. When I was in Los Angeles this weekend, I got into a rates conversation with a few Clippers fans (Very knowledgeable about the game btw) of which team has the best bench. When the games slow down and teams are getting tired late in the season, the Knicks are the only team that can realistically go 15 deep, and have a primary offensive option and backup on each team. Besides as the teams starts to gel, and Wallace and Camby come back healthy, I can’t see anybody that would want to see this team in the playoffs! Especially with Stat dominating the low blocks!

I seriously doubt there’s anything mysterious about this, or that Woodson “doesn’t know” why it happens. If the team is consistently adjusting well at half-time, it’s because someone (almost certainly Woodson) is reading the defensive end of the game extremely well and communicating it to the players in the break.

As an avid Knicks fan, the discrepancy with the defense starts with Tyson. He is our defensive captain, but do to the shortage of bigs, and the big minutes he’s expected to play, he conserves his energy until the Third, and really let’s loose in the fourth. If he gets in foul trouble during the first half, than his defense for the entire game would be limited. This is why when Rasheed and Camby were semi healthy, the defense was much better as Tyson could rest and go harder as he knew there were two more defensive anchors behind him. Lets see how the Knicks play when they come back.